(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

Hello everybody, it's MinisterTol23 back with another video, I'm going to do a quick sound check first to make sure that the sound is working before I actually get into this video. So let's see, don't have the, there we go, alright. So the last time I tried making a video was having some problems connecting. If that happens again then I'll just, from now on I'll just pre-record the videos. So tomorrow of course I'm planning on doing a study on the book of John again, if there's problems with that I'll try it early in the morning, if they persist with the internet problems then I'll just do a recording of it somewhere else and that'll take a bit longer but I prefer to get the video out instead of just continuously trying to do it on live stream and then it doesn't work. But anyway, so today I want to revisit a verse which I talked about a couple weeks ago in one of the videos that I made, The Fear of God, which I made I think two weeks ago and that verse is Ecclesiastes 12.13 which says, let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter, fear God and keep his commandments for this is the whole duty of man. So previously we looked at the command in this verse to fear God but today I want to talk about the verse in its entirety. The preacher who is the identified subject, the identified speaker of this book of Ecclesiastes in verse 2 of chapter 1 concludes in the end of the book, this is the second to last verse in Ecclesiastes, that this, that is written in the verse, is the whole duty of man. Now the word whole, w-h-o-l-e, means entire, complete, all of. So the word duty means obligation, responsibility, task to be done. So what the scriptures are telling us here is the meaning of life, the purpose of why we're here. What are we as mankind supposed to be doing? We're supposed to fear God and to keep his commandments. That is the whole, the entire duty of man. That's the entirety of what we as Christians are supposed to do. There's nothing else. If we're fearing God and keeping his commandments, we're doing what we as mankind have in place here to do. That is our meaning. That is our purpose. That's the conclusion of the whole matter that's presented in the book of Ecclesiastes, a book wherein is contained amazing wisdom and observation and the book of the Bible that contains the word vanity or the word vain more than any other book of the Bible. The word vanity means meaninglessness, emptiness, how without purpose, without profit, things like that. The preacher, which some believe to be Solomon, identifies the things of this world and the everyday activities of this life as ultimately meaningless, as vanity, as vain. The only thing that we ever could do or should do that has meaning that has eternal value which fulfills our purpose is the service of God. All else is nothing. It's a waste of time. It's a waste of effort. The book begins with this statement in Ecclesiastes one verse two to four, vanity of vanities saith the preacher, vanity of vanities, all is vanity. What profit hath a man of all his labor which he taketh under the sun? One generation passeth away and another generation cometh, but the earth abideth forever. Again, as I said earlier, the word vanity means that which has no meaning. It's empty. It's meaningless. Okay? And the preacher declares that all is vanity. He observes the things of this world and sees an abundance of vanity, of meaninglessness and emptiness and worthlessness and the worthless works of men. What is the profit of it? He asks in verse three. That should be a question we ought to ask ourselves when we do anything. What is the purpose of this? What is the goal? What is the end result? What is the profit? How in any way is this fulfilling my duty as a Christian, as a child, as a servant of God? There are many things that we could spend our time doing. We'd have no profit whatsoever which are just vanity. Okay? But obviously there are some things in this world which we have to do in order to get through this life. Like work, for example. Like the Bible talks about in Ecclesiastes that the works that we do under the sun are vanity. Well, according to Genesis chapter three, the fact that we toil in labor and work hard to produce nourishment in order to survive is a curse from God as a result of our sin. Okay? He cursed Adam with doing that, with working very hard and toiling at producing crops and things like that. Okay? So that is a curse because of our sin. So it's just something that we need to do. But it's not something that we should focus on and make our whole lives about, is what the scriptures are teaching. The book of Ecclesiastes repeats this over and over again. And because I'm not doing a full study of that book in particular today, I'm not going to go through all the examples, but just a few such as the following. Verse 14 of chapter one says, I have seen all the works that are done under the sun and behold all is vanity and vexation of spirit. Ecclesiastes 2.11 says, then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought and on the labor which I had labored to do and behold all was vanity and vexation of spirit and there was no profit under the sun. Ecclesiastes 5.7 says, for in the multitude of dreams and in many words there are also diverse vanities, but fear thou God. Ecclesiastes 11.10 says, therefore remove sorrow from thy heart and put away evil from thy flesh for childhood and youth are vanity. So again and again, the things of this world are called vanity and also vexation of spirit. But notice also in chapter five verse seven here, it contrasts the diverse vanities with the fear of God, which we talked about in a previous video. Those who are fearing God and keeping his commandments as we see in the conclusion of the book are fulfilling their duty and that of course then is not vanity. That is something we are supposed to do, okay? By fear of God, the Bible says men depart from evil. So again, it all connects with keeping the commandments of God, serving God, not doing iniquity. Doing iniquity, going into the world, doing the things of the world, focusing on the things of the flesh and the desires of the flesh instead of serving the Lord. That would be vanity, okay? Everything which separates us from the focus on the Creator, from the focus on the Lord is vanity. The scriptures show us that the thoughts of the natural man are vain. In Psalm 94 verse 11 it says, the Lord knoweth the thoughts of man that they are vanity. That is often the things which we think about are, from the perspective of God, meaningless. And this should be obvious to anybody because I'm sure anybody in this world has been idle at some point in their life and just let their mind wander. And I know this happens to me a lot when I'm trying to fall asleep and lying in my bed just thinking about random thoughts and stupid questions that will just pop into my hand, or my head rather, I'll think about something which I said today which was stupid or I'll think about things of the past or I'll think about strange hypothetical situations and scenarios and things like that. Things which have no profit, things that are vain, vain thoughts, okay? We should always focus on the Bible and think about the scriptures and think about serving God and things like that, things which will actually profit us. If your mind gets off the things of the Spirit, off the scriptures, off of serving the Lord it is easy to think thoughts of vanity. The attitude that we ought to have toward these thoughts is given in Psalm 119 verse 113. It says, I hate vain thoughts but thy law do I love. Psalm 119 is a great psalm which focuses on the subject of the Word of God, of how great the laws and the testimonies and the judgments of the commandments of the Lord are. And if we are doing what we are supposed to be doing according to the New Testament of putting off the flesh, putting off the old man and walking after the Spirit, then we should be minding the things of the Spirit. That's the definition of walking in the Spirit according to Romans 8.5. So if we are to serve God and not to fulfill the lust of the flesh which will lead us into the works of the flesh, then our mind should be set on the things of heaven, on the things of God, the things of His Word, and not of the vanity of this world. So instead of letting our mind wander onto the things of this world, we should focus on reading His Word, delight in the scriptures, read the Bible, for that is never vague. But according to the Bible, by it you shall grow, as it says in 1 Peter 2, it says, desire the sincere milk of the Word that you may grow thereby. The Bible constantly tells and exhorts us to be sober-minded as well. In 1 Peter chapter 1 it tells us to gird up the loins of our mind, to let us be sober. That means to think seriously and sensibly. That's what sobriety is. Titus chapter 2 describes the purpose of our salvation, the result of our salvation, for the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lust, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world. We as Christians should, we've been called to, deny the things of this world, to live soberly, righteously, and godly. To live soberly would require us not to be distracted with vanity and vain thoughts. We ought to hate vain thoughts, as it says in Psalm 119 verse 113, and not let our minds drift away from the seriousness of serving God. Another thing which is vain is beauty. Proverbs 31 verse 30, favor is deceitful and beauty is vain, but a woman that fearth the Lord, she shall be praised. Now this chapter, Proverbs 31 deals with the attributes of a good wife, a virtuous woman, and one of them is that she should fear the Lord. Of course, we know that fearing God is the whole duty of man. Therefore, the scriptures tell us that beauty is vain as opposed to the fear of the Lord. If a woman is beautiful but does not fear God, the appearances do not matter. It says also in another scripture that I, as just a paraphrase here, I don't have the verse written down, but it says that a fair woman without discretion is like a jewel in the, in the snout of a pig, okay, and I think you get the point from that, that there might be something which is pleasing to the eyes, but without understanding, without wisdom from God, without the fear of the Lord, it's meaningless. It doesn't do anything, okay? It's greater to have a woman who actually fears God, keeps his commandments, actually serves him, and that's something that we all ought to take to our heart in this modern world that we live in, which puts a big emphasis on physical appearance, where women, even some Christian women, unfortunately, will put their focus in their life on how they look and put more focus on that than their walk with God, that instead of reading their Bible and going to church, they spend most of their time trying to buy new clothes and buy new makeup and put on makeup and things like that, but according to the Bible, that's all vain. It's a foolish thing to do. We should focus on our walk with God and focus on reading the Bible and learning the Scriptures. The following verse also calls all the following things vanity as well, Titus 3.9, but avoid foolish questions and genealogies and contentions and strivings about the law, for they are unprofitable and vain. These things we are told to avoid, foolish questions, genealogies, strivings about the law and contentions. Again, what profit does it have? What is the purpose of doing these things? What difference does it make about genealogies, for example? In the New Testament, that doesn't matter. The only genealogy that matters is that of Christ, as we see in Matthew 1 and Luke 3, because we know that he was descended from David through his mother Mary in fulfillment of Bible prophecy, but it doesn't matter who we're descended from, because we're not looking for a Messiah. The Messiah has already come, and foolish questions as well. Again, we should be serious and sober-minded according to the Scriptures, not looking for stupid things to argue about which make no difference whatsoever. We might spend days, there's people like this out there who spend days and weeks and months and years of their life trying to figure out and contend and strive about things which make absolutely no difference whatsoever. But the Bible tells us to avoid all these things, because they are unprofitable in vain. And this verse also shows us again what our attitude ought to be toward vain things, towards vanity. As the Psalms told us that we ought to hate vain thoughts, so we know we are told to avoid things that are unprofitable in vain. We are not to be like the world. A Christian is commanded to come out from among them, to come out from among the world and be he separate, it says in 2 Corinthians 6. Therefore it's written in Ephesians 4.17, this I say therefore in testifying the Lord that he heads forth, walk not as other Gentiles walk in the vanity of their mind. We may look at the world around us and see that they're wrapped up in vanity in their appearance. For example, as we talked about earlier in Proverbs 31 with the woman who, the virtuous woman who doesn't focus on the appearance, but focuses on the fear of the Lord. All the magazines and television shows and products you see in the stores, which are just focused on trying to alter somebody's appearance. I mean, you go down to Walmart and there's like two aisles with makeup and hair products for women and all that kind of stuff, but that's all vain. Or you look at the world and you see people who are constantly coveting new things. They want a new house, they want a new car, they want new clothes or just new anything. They always want new things. They want as much stuff as possible and they dream for new things and new possessions. That's the sin of covetousness. And Jesus said in Luke 12, 15, and he said unto them, take heed and beware of covetousness for a man's life consistent, not in the abundance of the things which he possesses, the things which we store up for ourselves in this life will not be taken with us into heaven or hell. It's all temporary. Naked we come into this world and naked we'll go out of it. Okay. Don't waste your time building up treasures for yourself upon this earth when you lose it and it will decay away anyway. It makes no sense. What's the purpose of focusing your entire life on getting these new things? Christ said not to build up treasures on the earth, but in heaven where it's not going to decay. He said to speak you first the kingdom of God and all these things shall be added unto you, meaning the necessities of the daily life, food and water and clothing and shelter and things like that. If you seek first the kingdom of God and you trust him and you just do what you're supposed to do, then you're not going to have to worry about that because God will provide for you according to the scriptures. So focus on serving God. Focus on the kingdom of heaven, on getting rewards of eternal value and not trying to increase your wealth and possession on this earth. If you work purely from a temporal perspective, that is vanity. The scriptures say also, Colossians 2 8, beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world and not after Christ. Again, this is not only a command, but it's also a warning. It says beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of this world. The word rudiment means something that is basic or simple. It's just the ordinary things of this world which are against Christ. We should not be spoiled with those things. The scriptures constantly warns us not to be worldly, not to be like the other people who know not God. In 1 John 2, for example, it says, love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. And then it tells us the things that are in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life. And it says those things are not of the Father, but are of the world. And it says the world passeth away, but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever. Why would you want to focus on the things of the world when those things are going to pass away? One day we're not going to have these fleshly, wicked bodies that we have today, but we're going to have a glorified body in heaven after the rapture, and we're not going to have those lusts and desires of the old man. We are to separate from the vanity of the mind of the world. That's what we should focus on today. We should not focus on the world, we should focus on God. We should separate from the world. The things that they love to do is vanity, but we should be servants and disciples of God. The scriptures say in Proverbs 22 verse 8, be that so with iniquity shall reap vanity and the rod of his anger shall fail. When you depart from the will of the Lord and you sin against him, that's what iniquity means. It's just a synonym for sin. The Bible says you shall reap vanity. Sowing is the planting process in farming and then reaping is when you gather the crops at the harvest. What it's saying is that when you decide to go the path of iniquity, instead of controlling the flesh, instead of walking in the spirit and serving God, the ultimate end result of your sin is vanity. In other words, there's no profit, there's no meaning in your sin against God. Why go the route of the iniquitous? Why after being born again and becoming a child of God, would you want to go and live in the old man and live like the world? What is the point? What does the world have to offer? What eternal value does it have? Nothing. You should know better as a Christian. God has enlightened our minds to understand how truly bad sin is and there's no reward for it. It's only a pleasure for a season. Yet the ultimate result will be a meaningless life and the chastisement of God as well. As talked about in Hebrews 12, that God will discipline us and punish us upon this earth for our sin. Again, we return back to Ecclesiastes 12, 13, which begins, let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter. So the matter presented in Ecclesiastes, that this world is vain and that the sin thereof is vanity as well, leads us to the conclusion that our only duty, our only purpose is to serve God. Doing righteously, committing yourself unto the will of the Lord is never vain. Not only will you have fellowship with the Lord, but you will reap eternal rewards in the kingdom of heaven and will be in the joy of the spirit. I'm going to deal with this subject of serving God a bit more in a later video I want to make in a few weeks called reasons why a Christian should serve God or something like that. Because what amazes me is the attitude that some people have who even save people, people who are born again, have about Christianity. Obviously not everybody who is saved is going to live a good life. Some people get into sin, some people get backslidden, some people don't actually serve God. But some people want to serve God, they don't know how to. Some people do know, but they just don't want to serve God. True biblical Christianity is not just an aspect of one's life. Christianity is not just a part of one's character. Some people treat it that way. They act like it's just one of many parts of who they are. They put their career and their interest and their hobbies on the same level as their service unto God. As if their service unto God is not the most important thing in the world, as if the world doesn't revolve around God himself. Why do we do that? Ask yourself if you're watching and you're a Christian and you know for a fact that you're saved, you know if you were to die today that you would go to heaven, do you believe the word of God? Do you believe the Bible? Do you believe that this is the inspired revealed truth from the mouth of the Lord himself? Do you not understand that this whole world is about God? The Lord created this world, he created everything within this world. The Lord created every human and every creature living and breathing. The Lord looks throughout the whole earth, he beholds the evil and the good, it says in the book of Proverbs. And one day the world that we see today, the heaven and the earth will pass away, but the only thing that will abide forever is the word of God. Jesus said heaven and earth shall pass away, but my word shall never pass away. And then I talked about 1 John 2 16 earlier where it says that the world will pass away, but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever. And God shall reign forever after the return of the Lord Jesus Christ and he shall reign forevermore. All who have not been born again, all who are not Christians will be cast into the lake of fire while the saints will live with and serve God in the new Jerusalem forever and ever. That's it. There's no other option. I mean, trusting Christ for your salvation is not optional. There's two fates for all mankind. It's either death. If you want to live, it's only through Christ. Christ said this is eternal life that they might know thee, the only true God of Jesus Christ whom thou has sent. The Bible says in 1 John 5, he that hath the son of God hath life and he that hath not the son of God hath not life. It's simple. If you have Jesus Christ, if you are born again, then you have eternal life. If you do not have Jesus Christ, if you have never been born again, you do not have life. Your ultimate fate is hell and you will not have anything that you have in this world there. It will all be gone. It will all pass away. It's just going to be torment for eternity. Why would you not want to at least trust in God to be saved and then also after you get saved, serve God so that you will have rewards in the kingdom of heaven. So the meaning of life itself is the Lord God and our purpose in this world is nothing else but to serve God. He's the Creator. He's the Master. He's the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. He's the one who will destroy the wicked at the day of the Lord and he'll reign forever more. So do you believe the Bible? And if the answer is yes, then you ought to know that this is the only reality. What the scriptures tell us is the truth. If you believe this book, then you understand that this is the truth and the testimony of God is the most important thing in the world. Why would you waste your life on vanity, things that have no meaning, no purpose, instead of spending your time serving God? Why put God second in your life and not put God above all and through all in every decision and every action that you make? We as Christians, as servants of God, children of God, first and everything else after that. That's the attitude that we ought to have. Stop treating the Bible and church and soul winning and prayer and things like that of little importance. We ought to love the Lord and want to serve him. It's not that complicated. The Bible says in Micah chapter 6 verse 8, He hath showed thee, O man, what is good and what doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God. That is what we ought to do. To fear God, keep his commandments, do justly in the sight of God, walk humbly with him. It's all about serving the Lord. That is our purpose. That is the meaning of life. I hope all that are listening today or later make that decision to put God more and more into their life. I of course need to work on that too. None of us are perfect. Everybody needs to grow. But we ought not to have the attitude that it doesn't matter. We ought to have the attitude that the Bible and the scriptures and the word of God and serving God is more important than anything else. We ought to avoid vanity and unprofitableness and wickedness to serve God and love him. So thank you everybody for watching. That's it for today. God bless you and goodbye. I'll be back with another video tomorrow hopefully on the book of John chapter 14. Again, if things go wrong with the internet, it doesn't really work that well, then I'll just probably get my camera out or use my webcam somewhere else and just pre-accord the video and edit it together and things like that. So thank you everybody for watching and goodbye. God bless you.